Ardvreck Castle

Ardvreck Castle stands on a rocky promontory reaching into Loch Assynt, in the far north-west Highlands of Sutherland. It was raised around 1490 by the MacLeods of Assynt, a branch of Clan MacLeod, and took over the defensive role of an earlier stronghold, Assynt Castle, which lay some four miles to the north-west. The building was a plain rectangular keep with a round stair tower, its ground floor divided into three vaulted compartments and its upper storeys carried on corbelling to form square rooms. Gunports pierced the walls, marking it as a working fortress rather than a comfortable residence. The castle’s most contested moment came in 1650, when the royalist commander James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, was surrendered to Covenanter forces here by the MacLeod laird after his defeat at the Battle of Carbisdale — an act variously told as cold betrayal for reward or as dutiful capture. In 1672 the Mackenzies seized Ardvreck and with it the lands of Assynt. They later built the more comfortable Calda House nearby, though that too was gutted by fire in 1737. Both now survive as roofless ruins standing beside the loch, each protected as a scheduled monument.